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People must live with two inevitabilities: death and taxes. Yet corporations do not necessarily ever "die" and, in many cases, they avoid paying taxes. |
A
detailed list would be far too long. One of the few artifacts to
defy known biology concerns how corporations can share vital components,
but that is a bionic fairy tale for another day. In short, a qualitative
(and perhaps quantitative) biological model emerges for describing
the corporate form. I call this species/model Ceteri.
* * * Most all of this story is true, except the part about corporations becoming another sentient species. There’s no way that could possibly be true, unless one happens to believe in demons… Authors of the precursory corporate business plans seemed to have pegged their hopes and dreams on summoning a helpful spirit or two. The venerable US Supreme Court gave credence to this belief in a ruling that was declared without debate and has never since been challenged. Contemporary legal theory revisits this numinous theme, in hauntingly familiar echoes of old mythos. As far as the "science" of corporations-as-species goes, they present a relatively new sentience which is not quite artificial intelligence, per se, but more like unnatural intelligence. In a perverse way, it warms the heart to think of all those happy, suburban, god-fearing Americans rushing into their two-hour commute, SUVs jamming metro freeways as they race toward corporate office complexes, then toiling away for hours of grief in cubicle hell… in service of the likes of seductive Belial, powerful Asmodai, mighty Furfur, or even the curiously-named Gäap. Frankly, I’m kinda fond of demons. Cute little buggers. Who could resist a name like "Furfur"? I’d much rather learn to work with such a fiction, since the manipulation of corporate interests almost demands that kind of belief. It is perhaps more effective, more operative, taken with a large grain of salt, than assuming an uninformed disbelief – à la Locke, who helped get us into this political nightmare, or his intellectual heirs, who spew a curiously agnostic milieu of corporate socialism with religious fervor through the likes of corporately-endowed NPR, PBS, etc. On the other hand, protesting in the streets, or in the legislatures, does little to slow a demon, and actually tends to feed their ephemeral maws; something called abulia forms a big part of corporate metabolism. Fortunately, more subtle means exist for bridling such beings: old fictions and religions inform us about conceits which the new fictions and religions belie. Corporations, like the demons of their simile, may behave like sentients, perhaps, but at about the sentience level of a spoiled brat. And, as anyone who’s ever served time as a sibling likely knows, knocking down an obnoxious, spoiled brat can feel quite satisfying and yet lead to huge "judicial" problems; but they can be caused to fall down nonetheless. Nothing is omnipotent, unless you believe so. But that’s an almost-completely-true story for another day.
Many heartfelt thanks to Ann Walther for help with editing the draft. For more info and refs to many other excellent resources online, like rat haus and POCLAD, see the reviews on PXN’s website: http://famous.aspect.to/study/ceteri/ |
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